Top Ten "Perfect" Albums!

[Charger]

Then we're getting down to the finest of the fine...The MOST perfect of the perfect..the top 3!!

And on 3rd place we have....

 


DEEP PURPLE - MACHINE HEAD




What's there to say? This is pure brilliance from back to front, start to finish, inside out!

Albums like this don't come around too often when just everything clicks into place. Perfection.

[Zzzptm]

Glad to see Machine Head get a good mention, as I was leaving it off my list so I could make room for more variety.

Like Purpendicular.



After all the chaos of Blackmore's departure in the early 90s. the band chose to do things much, much differently. This is that differently, recorded in the studio. It flows extremely well and is such a familiar-sounding album from the first listen. Has it been almost 30 years since it came out? Yep. It has. And I would put it right up alongside Machine Head for excellence, track by track never missing or making me wait patiently for the one I liked better to come up on the mix. It has aged so well and has such a wonderful feel to it... such a pleasure to be playing it now.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

8th Choice

Rush - Grace Under Pressure



Such a good album. It may not have the absolute classics from the earlier albums but this is such a consistent album. It's certainly a Top 5 album of theirs possibly Top 3.

1.   "Distant Early Warning"
2.   "Afterimage"
3.   "Red Sector A"
4.   "The Enemy Within"
5.   "The Body Electric"
6.   "Kid Gloves"
7.   "Red Lenses"
8.   "Between the Wheels"

[Vyn]

Eight:

2022's The Singularity by that little ol' band from Texas...Wo-Fat!

The whole freakin' thing, right here, right now, because words don't suffice:

[Vyn]

Rush - Grace Under Pressure

Of course, I could look it up, and probably will at some point, but I recall that there is a lot of backstory to this record. Or, rather, a lot of inspiration. Stemming from Geddy's grandmother/mother? I think, and her experience in Poland with the Nazi's.

[Charger]

Purpendicular! Yes that would have been my other Purple album that could have been eligible for the list.


And at #2 we have


BLAZE - TENTH DIMENSION




I have talked about this album before on these lists so no need to say anything other than this is pure perfection from start to finish plain and simple.

[Zzzptm]

Eight:

2022's The Singularity by that little ol' band from Texas...Wo-Fat!

This one's a total scorcher, no doubt. And you very nearly snaked *another* of my picks, but I got one Wo Fat album that I enjoy a teensy bit more than The Singularity...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQxvEz21R1U

Best thing about a Wo Fat album is that it's not going to mess around. It keeps things straightforward with bass, drums, guitar, and vocals and the adopted the early Deep Purple philosophy of not recording anything they couldn't also play the same way or better live. They also kept a page from Mötorhead about staying true to their roots, in this case blues-based metal from the early 70s. The boogie, the jam, the riff, the groove, it's all there, every album. And I'm spinning this one once I'm done with the suggestions immediately prior to it, thank you Vyn and Charger! 

[Vyn]

...blues-based metal from the early 70s. The boogie, the jam, the riff, the groove, it's all there, every album.

I can hear Iommi's imprimatur all over their guitar tone, and it's great.

-------------

Dawn broke on April 8th, 1985 just as it had always done. But when the sun went down that evening, it did so on a changed world. That is the day Slayer unleashed their second long-player into the collective ear of the human race, a record that 39 years and four months into the future would become my number nine offering: Hell Awaits.

Brocephus, this isn't music. Hell Awaits is a sonic assault akin to a nightmare ride on Satan's own rollercoaster. There is life before listening to it, then there is life after listening to it...and they are not the same. The raw production, frenzied guitar work, medieval combat-style percussion, guttural vocals, and creepy-ass basslines refuse to be integrated into anyone's preconceived notions. They demand to be dealt with on their own terms, or they will simply send the listener home crying.

Enjoy!

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

9th Pick

The Damned - The Black Album



I'm only really looking at the first CD release as the original 1980 double album had a 4th side of songs recorded live in front of their fan club members. Whilst there was a punky element to the album I thinks it's fair to say the goth rock is to the fore here. The 17-minute Curtain Call takes up the whole of side 3 and often gets sited as an example of Prog!

1.   "Wait for the Blackout"
2.   "Lively Arts"
3.   "Silly Kids Games"
4.   "Drinking About My Baby"
5.   "Twisted Nerve"
6.   "Hit or Miss"
7.   "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"   
8.   "Sick of This and That"
9.   "The History of the World (Part 1)"
10.   "13th Floor Vendetta"
11.   "Therapy"   
12.   "Curtain Call"

[Zzzptm]

Photo-Finish by Rory Gallagher

I was trying to think of a non-prog album that left me 100% satisfied and remembered good ol' Mr. Gallagher! And I *love* Photo-Finish. There are albums of his with better individual songs on them, but none that flow as well as this one. It's not a concept album, just 8 songs that string really well together. Bonus is that you get Rory Gallagher's guitar work, which is about as good as an axeman gets. It's got fun tracks, sad tracks, rocking tracks, thinking tracks... it's a great work of art.

[Vyn]

The time for my last one has arrived. I ended up with more of these, "perfect," albums than I thought I would at the start. I mentioned Mercyful Fate's Don't Break the Oath previously, and here are a few more:

Black Sabbath Black Sabbath
Miles Davis Kind of Blue
The Moody Blues Days of Future Passed
Herbie Hancock Headhunters

Sabbath's debut would have nailed it but with one imperfection - "Evil Woman". Warner Brothers rectified that issue on the American release, of course, but the fact that there was some bobbling going on with the album makes it imperfect enough to not make the cut, for me. And the two jazz albums are, well, jazz. Not anything wrong with that, but they seem outside of the spirit of this endeavor. I mean, what's next, classical? Indigenous hollow-log thumping? lol

The others listed above each have their own, very slight imperfections. This one here, though, does not:

Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin' by Gerry and the Pacemakers.





HAHAHA, no.

Seriously, though, number ten:

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Exodus

Here's a YouTube video of the title track - I couldn't find the entire record in one video, but it doesn't matter because the format does it no justice at all. Obviously a reggae outfit, Bob and crew performed the tracks on this album with a solid blues-rock underpinning that make each one of them stand out. Collectively they all make sense, and I can listen to this thing on my record player repeatedly. Tackling the big things in life - faith, getting along with other people, individual intimacy...yet it never feels heavy.

Not necessarily my number one perfect album, but a damn excellent release.

[Charger]

Well well well...it's time for THE most PERFECT album of them all.

And as you lot might have noticed one band has been absent from my list so far....but no more.

BLACK SABBATH - THE MOB RULES!!




Absolutely no weak spots on this album. This has to be THE most consistant album ever made. The quality of all the songs is incredible. And there's a whole bunch of variety here as well. No two songs are twins but they are all brothers.

This was the high water mark of Black Sabbath for sure. They made some great albums after this one but no album matched this in perfection...not before...not after....

I can boldly say that no other band ever has touched this piece of perfection....and I seriously doubt there will ever be an album this perfect again.

[Zzzptm]

Excellent way to wrap things up!

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

@Charger
My 4th or 5th favourite Sabbath album (depending which I prefer on any given day with H&H)! But given that those 5 are my favourite 5 albums of all time shouldn't lead you to think that I don't adore Mob Rules, I do.


FINAL PICK

This will probably come as no surprise to anyone...

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbth



Yes! I even love Fluff!! although I agree that it is maybe a minute too long! But from start to finish this is Sabbath at their finest, even Ozzy hits the vocals right out of the park... so much so that he would never be able to re-produce them live ever again!

[Vyn]

I can't argue with those Sabbath picks! I was literally writing out my post about Sabbath's debut when it struck me that they had that song swap. And it doesn't even have to do with liking one of the songs over the other so much as Evil Woman just did not fit with the rest of the record. It's like going out on a date with what you think is a beautiful woman and then later discovering they have a rather large guitar pick. JARRING